James Franson

James Franson is a professor emeritus in the physics department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). He received his BS degree in physics from Purdue University and his PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology. He was previously a member of the principal professional staff at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and Research Professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at Johns Hopkins. 

Franson is actively involved in research on the foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum optics, and quantum information. His theoretical contributions include his proposal for a nonlocal interferometer that violates Bell’s inequality, the theory of nonlocal dispersion cancellation, and quantum logic operations based on the quantum Zeno effect. More recently, he and his colleagues have developed practical applications of postselection, including postselecting on the presence of zero photons.

He has also been involved in experimental work in a variety of areas. His group was the first to experimentally demonstrate quantum cryptography in free space and the first quantum logic operations using single photons as the qubits. 

Franson is a Fellow of Optica and the American Physical Society. In 2025, he received the Leonard Mandel Quantum Optics Award, “For pioneering work on nonlocal interferometry and the use of nonclassical states of light for quantum information processing.”